Pbem++ cheat protection

[Cfant]

Hi!

I didn't find anything to this topic. How does Pbem++ protect from cheaters? THe save is still downloaded - how can I say, if he says "nope, the attack failed" and plays the turn again?

[elmo3]

Pretty sure if you replay a turn multiple times the server will notify your opponent. However someone from Martix will need to officially confirm that.

[larryfulkerson]

The only way to cheat and download your game again from the start
is to use task manager to kill TOAW's process and re-start TOAW
and start again playing on-line. I'm not sure what the server
does about multiple downloads but the player can start all over
again this way. So far.

[nnason]

This "cheat" works on pretty much any asynchronous connection.

[DanNeely]

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

The only way to cheat and download your game again from the start
is to use task manager to kill TOAW's process and re-start TOAW
and start again playing on-line. I'm not sure what the server
does about multiple downloads but the player can start all over
again this way. So far.

Not sure how worthwhile tracking downloads on the server would be. copy/paste shenanegens in Explorer would allow anyone who wanted to cheat to bypass it easily enough.

Anything short of always online with an untrusted, autosaving to the server only client, which also relied on the server for combat/interdiction/fog of war reveals/etc (basically every move attempt sent to the server to be resolved with the client not having the data needed to do so locally) is going to be defeated by anyone who's determined to cheat.

As long as the client itself has to be trusted there's little value in going beyond enough checking to keep honest players honest.

[Hyding]

I thought the game counted downloads and messaged when multiple downloads occurred.

Responding to Larry. I meant to quote him.

[IainMcNeil]

The way the system works there is never a file saved to disk so you cant tamper or look at it with a binary viewer. In addition the system tracks how often you download the file. There should always be a matching number of uploads and downloads and if the system sees more downloads than uploads it flags the account and monitors it and sends a warning. If the behaviour continues you get another warning and if it still persists its referred to an admin and the account is banned. Happily it rarely comes to banning as once people realise its being monitored they stop.

No system is perfect but we've made it pretty hard to cheat without hacking the executable.